2 20 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



country, such as a wide, flat moor, or cultivated downland, where 

 there are no trees, and where hedges are few and far between. 



The Goshawk, on the other hand, with a different mode of 

 flight — going straight from its owner's fist to the quarry at which it 

 is flown — is essentially the hawk for an enclosed country, and if 

 properly trained in the first instance should never be lost. It is 

 a mistake, however, to suppose that anyone inclined to the sport, 

 though knowing nothing of it, may purchase a trained Goshawk, 

 take her out the next day, and fly her without any risk of losing her. 

 She would almost certainly be lost for want of the requisite 

 knowledge on the part of her new owner how to manage her. 

 You may buy a new horse or a new dog, and hunt the one 

 or shoot over the other possibly without disappointment ; but it is 

 otherwise with a hawk. Hawking requires an apprenticeship, and 

 no one can expect success who has not gone through the various 

 stages of taming and training his own birds, spoiling some 

 and losing others, until he has discovered his mistakes by 

 dire experience. 



There was a time, before the art of shooting flying came into 

 vogue, when almost every country gentleman in England kept a Gos- 

 hawk or two, and very high prices were given for well-trained birds. 

 Even in James I.'s time, after " birding-pieces " had been intro- 

 duced, good Goshawks fetched a good round sum. Edmund 

 Bert, who published " An Approved Treatise of Hawks and 

 Hawking," in 1619, tells us that he had "for a Goshawke 

 and Tarsell a hundred marks, both solde to one man within 

 sixteen months," and for another he was offered forty pounds, and 

 ultimately sold her for thirty — an extraordinary price, when we 

 consider the relative value of money in those days. At that time^ 



